Intended Audiences: Chart

Primary Audiences Primary Audiences Primary Audiences Primary Audiences Primary Audiences	STUDENTS AND INDEPENDENT SCHOLARS, many of whom can name music as one of their main interests during their adolescence and young adulthood, may be able to use the website for research concerning the CCM phenomenon since the mid-sixties. Although the site's beginnings are in actual assignments given to students in a university course, the editors welcome contributions of several sorts from virtually anyone capable of reading, understanding, and competently following the directions of the page called Instructions for Contributors. Suggestion: any student presented with an "open-topic" essay assignment in a course might ask the teacher's permission to write an analytic essay for the AMOS Project according to the website's specifications (see Instructions for Contributors, Preliminary Album Analysis Grid, Album Profile, Essay Template #1, and Essay Template #2). Grading of the essay would be left entirely to that student's teacher, and the website's editorial staff alone would judge the essay's suitability for AMOS Project publication; but this is an excellent opportunity to attempt two worthwhile things at once.
	TEACHERS can use the website to locate contemporary poetry for classroom study that will demonstrate both social concern and literary sophistication while attracting students by the musical settings of the poems. Although it is often lamented today that students care little about poetry, the huge sales volumes of the recorded-music and live-performance industries indicate that young people spend a great deal of time indeed with some sort of poetry--not always very good, but sometimes better than a skeptic might believe. Typically, students asked to study the lyrics of a favorite album will do so with more vigor than they will use in approaching, say, Keats's odes or (gasp) Shakespeare's sonnets. Studying record-album lyrics should not, of course, be mistaken for the end of poetic training; in some cases, it may only be the first step toward the goal of being able to read Keats and Shakespeare with acuity and delight. But the student who finds that a favorite musical artist uses remarkable figures of speech from time to time has moved off Square One--and so has the student who finds that the artist uses mostly clichés. If the teacher wishes to encourage students to follow a thematic thread of social concern, this website will provide suggestions for work to be analyzed, instructions for doing the analysis, and examples of analysis. If the labor would fit course requirements, teachers may invite students to write an essay for the AMOS Project for course credit, thus giving the students a chance for publication, a bit of insight into the world of editorial expectations, a sense of writing with real-world, practical purpose, and a strong exercise in critical thinking. See the page called Instructions for Contributors and the comments to students (above). To add research components to the assignment, see Suggested Research Components.
	CONTEMPORARY SONGWRITERS can use the website to expand their awareness of how biblical social imperatives have been presented in the recent past of popular music and to be challenged by the most skillfully literate writings of their recent peers. By studying the work of older writers, young songwriters can identify topics that need further treatment--especially in updating language for contemporary listeners; they can also identify apparent gaps in CCM's coverage of biblical (and biblically warranted) topics. Contemporary songwriters can also use the website for inspiration toward writing new music for congregational use. Songs of worship are not the only sorts appropriate for congregations, as hymnals have faithfully suggested for hundreds of years. But where the hymnals have been removed from a church in favor of "choruses," it is not easy to provide other sorts of songs, for most choruses in popular use today address only the topics of personal piety and/or the greatness of God. Music ministers in such settings--without the benefit of hymnals--must labor especially hard to find suitable songs beyond that narrow range of "vertical" expressions called "worship." It is important that the congregation be led in corporate expression of a broad range of biblical desires and resolutions to act, but where can "horizontal" songs be found readily (outside of hymnals)? There is a clear need for good songwriting that will encourage congregations to band together in Christlike service to their communities.
	CONTEMPORARY PERFORMERS can use the website to identify potential additions to their repertoires that demonstrate both social concern and literary sophistication. One of the features of CCM since the mid-1960s has been the exponentially increasing number of songwriters performing their own work; but in the process of providing us with thousands of new songs, many performers have neglected to pay attention to worthy songs already written by their peers. Granted, legal strictures on use of borrowed songs have probably discouraged some musicians from performing "covers," but our Christian subculture certainly needs to pause repeatedly over our better songs--not just ignore them in a pell-mell rush toward the "next new thing." Working musicians, then, can use this site to identify songs written on social topics that they wish to address in their own concerts or on their albums. Any necessary permissions for such use may be well worth acquiring.
	YOUTH PASTORS can use the website to recommend biblically rooted music to their young parishioners and to support presentations about the social imperatives of Scripture. Because most teenagers and even pre-adolescents are strongly attracted to pop music of one kind or another, most youth pastors eventually have to take certain positions regarding that music. In some cases, the youth pastor's opinions may simply be aired as guidelines for the young peoples' personal choices; in other cases, those positions may be delivered as rules for conduct in those particular youth groups. The easiest but least defensible move is to impose a ban on all music not produced by overtly Christian artists and publishers. But such a ban includes, awkwardly enough, recordings of Handel's Messiah, Bach's organ concertos, and Mendelssohn's Elijah produced by a non-Christian-controlled recording company. It also includes a significant number of popular songs having healthy or wise lyrics from non-Christian artists or producers. Another move, much more difficult to maintain, is to advertise a constantly changing list of banned artists, albums, songs, and concerts. That initiative is doomed to failure by the sheer volume of work necessary to "keep up." Some youth pastors, of course, spend more time on the positive side by simply recommending certain artists and albums, but even then the criteria may be no more sophisticated than that the artists are "Christian" and that the music (meaning the instrumental and/or vocal sound) is "cool." Surely Christian young people need and deserve more help than that in making their listening decisions. Tastes in musical styles come and go, and some Christians produce shallow, poorly written songs. Why not teach the young listeners how to understand and respond to the lyrics of the songs they choose to hear? In these days of generally declining reading skills (and interest) among young people, youth ministers can encourage Christian teenagers to improve their reading and understanding of verbal texts by studying such lyrics. An immediate benefit would be their improved personal access to the word of God, which too few read well (if at all) on their own; later benefits would include their improved capacities as thinking members of the church and of the broader culture. Some Ideas for Youth-Pastoral Use of this Website
Secondary Audiences Secondary Audiences Secondary Audiences	SCHOLARS OF POP CULTURE can use the website for research concerning topical trends in Christian-produced music and the ways in which such music may mirror the "envelope" culture. The site does not claim to offer ultra-scientific data, but it can offer certain soft indicators of where, at least, one might productively do serious research.
	SERIOUS MUSIC COLLECTORS can use the website to identify recordings worth adding to their collections. Because topics of social concern (SC) are so relatively uncommon in CCM, they are sometimes handledwith uncommon language--that is, without the same level of dependence upon cliché exhibited by so many CCM songs. In the best cases, the lyrical treatments are strikingly poetic, worthy of being set beside the best social-concern work of artists from the broader culture. Some Christian songwriters' SC work has indeed been performed by artists outside the Christian subculture because the cliché-free logic, even with its scriptural basis, passes the invisible boundary so transparently and powerfully. (Being free of cliché, of course, does not necessarily mean being free of all Gospel significance or motivation.) Collectors with special interest in folk and protest music of any era could profitably scan the site, using summary album analyses and posted essays to identify recordings of particular importance.
	RECORD-COMPANY EXECUTIVES can use the website to monitor the critical reception of their artists' albums and to get ideas for new-music topicality that can be passed on to those artists. Ideally, the site may encourage them to seek and to publish the work of conscience-driven, artistically sophisticated writers. From Habitat for Humanity to Convoy of Hope to Good Community efforts to college-students' volunteering and beyond, there are signs that the Christian subculture (in America, at least) is renewing its awareness of scriptural sociological mandates; thus, a large new market could open up within the next generation. Even music-business leaders with an eye primarily for the bottom line could be attracted by that possibility. This website, however, hopes to attract music-industry leaders by appealing primarily to their consciences and their knowledge of scripture.
	PARENTS OF TEENAGERS can use the website to identify music (and artists) solidly rooted in the tradition of social concern in order to model purchasing and listening habits for their children. It is almost certainly better to provide positive models of Christian music than to spend an inordinate amount of time in castigating bad music. Furthermore, it is almost certainly better to demonstrate and encourage an eclectic, rather than narrow, approach to appreciating CCM. Parents who wish to use music to influence their children toward thoroughly Christlike (not just shallowly, faddishly "Christian") behavior can find much help on this website. By reading album profiles and essays about the most recent albums, parents can identify potential purchases that will provide more than some "cool" music. By studying older albums, they can find ways to put their children in touch with good songs published before the latest Top 40 Countdown, thus giving them a certain sense of history and teaching them to be more tolerant of unfamiliar musical settings.
	SONG LEADERS AND MUSIC MINISTERS can use the website to identify well-written songs or parts of songs that amplify social imperatives of Scripture for their congregations. Songs of worship are not the only sorts appropriate for congregational use, as hymnals have faithfully suggested for hundreds of years. But where the hymnals have been removed from a church in favor of "choruses," it is not easy to provide other sorts of songs, for most choruses in popular use today address only the topics of personal piety and/or the greatness of God. Music ministers in such settings--without the benefit of hymnals--must labor especially hard to find suitable songs beyond that narrow range of "vertical" expressions called "worship." It is important that the congregation be led in corporate expression of a broad range of biblical desires and resolutions to act, but where can "horizontal" songs be found readily (outside of hymnals)? This website will provide some ideas for choosing and adapting such music.